Commission set to benchmark SME e-business policies across EU
Assessment and benchmarking of national and regional policies on the promotion of e-business among SMEs (small and medium sized enterprises) will be made easier following the consultation launched on 18 February by the European Commission. All e-economy stakeholders are invited to contribute to the consultation, which is available on the Commission's Europa website until 31 March. It has been designed to help assess the strengths and weaknesses of national and regional policies in this field, as well as helping to clarify how European programmes can help to complement these programmes. The assessment of policies against the final list of agreed criteria is expected to take place in June 2002. The same month will see a high level conference which will highlight examples of good public sector practice in developing e-business policies. The first phase of procedure has been finalised with a report which has identified more than 150 policies which are directed at SMEs and e-business. The final results are expected to be discussed at the Council of industry ministers in November 2002. The Commission has also established a benchmarking study of incubator management, which is designed to evaluate the performance of the roughly 800 incubators in the EU. Meanwhile a study which has already been completed by the Commission on the subject of business start up procedures shows that there has been major progress in some EU Member States, but that great differences remain between many of them. EU Enterprise and Information society Commissioner, Erkki Liikanen welcomed the progress made, but added that the variance coupled with the minimum capital requirements maintained for establishing businesses, meant that further progress was still needed. The study highlighted the major moves made in countries such as Greece, Portugal, Italy and Finland to simplify procedures for setting up a business and noted that one stop shops for establishing businesses were available in all except two of the 15 Member States (UK and Denmark). The report concluded that conditions for setting up a one man business are 'reasonably satisfactory'.